I bet you’ve heard Japan is an expensive country. In many ways it is, but not everything has to cost you an arm and a leg. In this article, I give some of my favorite tips to either save money in Japan, or to get more out of your money…

Like any language, Japanese possesses a myriad of vivid descriptive terms for color. This article will introduce some interesting differences and quirks about color in the Japanese language, and also offer a selection of beautiful Japanese color names so that learners can expand their vocabulary palette beyond simple (and vague) descriptors such as red, green and blue.

Amanohashidate (天橋立 – Japan’s “heavenly bridge”) is one of the renowned three views of Japan, yet due to its location on the often-neglected Sea of Japan coast it often doesn’t make the cut for many sightseers’ itineraries.

When most people think of Japan and alcohol, they think of rice wine sake. But Japan is also a world-class producer of malt whisky. If you enjoy a good Scotch whisky (Japanese whisky is made in the Scottish style), but haven’t yet tried any from Japan, you’re really missing out!

It’s been more than a year since I first released Nihonshock’s Japanese cheat sheet pack, and in that time it became clear to me that I needed to take the product just a little bit further. Therefore, I am re-releasing it…

Japanese has very long verb phrases. Things attach to verbs in various ways to produce phrases like 急がなければならない. Just to think, it can be way longer than this. This chain can easily go past six things in succession.

The expression ‘hell on earth’ conjures up images of something very unpleasant, so it is unlikely that the expression would be used to draw tourists. However, in Beppu city the expression ‘hell on earth’ is probably the best way to describe what you’ll get..